At Paul in London Paul suffered for his art and went back in for the second half of Carousel: The Songs of Jacques Brel at the Barbican

At Pirate Dog Alex Sierz responded to Matt Trueman’s thoughts on liveness and in his effortlessly concise way maybe hit the proverbial nail on the head.

At Russell’s Theatre Reviews it was all about the touring production of Beauty and the Beast. I saw UK Production’s version when it was last doing the rounds 18 months or so ago and would rather have my fingernails pulled out while watching Waiting For Godot than repeat the experience. But, with the brand behind it, it seems like there are many more regional audiences to traumatise before it dies.

At Shenton’s View Mark Shenton had a timely reminder about the problems of buying theatre tickets.

At That Damn Yankee Jason Ferguson continued to explain British Theatre to Americans, this time with the aid of a fire curtain.

At The Guardian Theatre Blog Andrew Haydon considered his relationship to (man of the week) Howard Barker and, subsequently, the terms by which we judge theatre. My (limited) experience of Barker in performance has done nothing but leave me cold – though the other half of Write By Numbers would say the opposite of that – and as anti-intellectual as it might sound for me theatre is at its most compelling when it engages my heart as well as my head. In that way the title of Haydon’s piece is a no-brainer: yes, of course we should watch plays for pleasure because I can stay at home, save my money and read dry critical theorising on the internet for free.

At View From The Stalls the task was to puzzle out what actually happened in Memory Cells with even its Director getting in on the action…

At West End Whingers it was a trip to the almost universally adored Enron which which was on the cards and, perhaps inevitably, it just couldn’t live up to the hype.